Month: July 2006

Okay, a few weeks ago I blogged about a script that could autogenerate a fdi file for HAL that could create the required video_adapter_pm methods and properties needed to suspend and resume your videocard on suspend and hibernate.

So, if you are one of a few people that are running a very recent (CVS less than a few months old) HAL and the new pm-utils (the one from freedesktop.org rather than redhat), and have to set odd kernel command lines or hacky commands to get your machine to work please can you give my script a whirl.

The idea is for technical people to send me autogenerated fdi files that are matched to their hardware, which are then be merged into upstream hal. This means on the next HAL release more systems just work out of the box without new users having to google and add oddball options gleaned from some random post of a bloke that has a similar laptop.

So, if you know you have to set S3_MODE or you have to add dpms suspend calls at the end of your custom suspend script, can you please try pm-utils and my script. The script probably won't be much use if you don't know what the cause your suspend problem is, although you could use it for that.

Utopia FC5 repository now has never new version of glibc (and the updated deps for glibc…) needed for the new CVS HAL dependency on libvolume_id. This is a good thing as removes a whole chunk of code out of HAL and into a shared library that can be used by other stuff.

Not sure how many people this will affect, but don't run this repo update on an important machine. It all seems to work for me, but test at your peril.

On a related note, the latest g-p-m checks with PolicyKit to prevent the “suspend error: unknown error” if you try to suspend with no (or with a broken) PolicyKit. You'll need to add –disable-policykit to the configure line for now, if you don't use a new HAL or have no desire to test PolicyKit. :-)

Okay, long time no blog, which I'll apologize for: As some of you may know, I've just started a stressful new job for the summer, and am sharing with a friend in Gravesend near London. The house is a new-build, and has no phone-line or Internet yet, and the Internet at work is closely monitored – hence why I havn't blogged since before GUADEC. And people complain my entries are too long, so I'll try to keep this one brief.

There are also a few people in my family who are currently unwell, so all-in-all this month has had little time or concentration on OSS stuff, so apologies if there have been long delays in email replies.

GUADEC: Wow wow wow. I've never been to a GUADEC before, and sure will be going again next year. It was really great to meet all you guys in the flesh, so to speak. It was really odd to talk to people face-to-face for the first time even tho I've known them for years. Apart from not finding my flatmates on the first day till nightfall, and Jon McCann successfully getting me very drunk on the Fluendo beach party, the whole thing was really great. Thanks go to all the people that made me feel very welcome (especially Puaff for the lift from Reus airport).

GNOME Power Manager: Lots of nice fixes and translations being committed (THANKS), and also lots of sane feature requests in bugzilla. Initial feedback on d-d-l is good for inclusion in 2.16, which would be great as other modules can then start relying on the Inhibit stuff for g-p-m and g-s also. Feedback on sleep nomenclature has been good, even tho a recent Fedora kernel has broken resume for a few people. I'm just glad I'm not a kernel maintainer. :-)